Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Tom Clark, Keith DeRose and George Bealer

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12 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive

9455	Maybe proper names have the content of fixing a thing's category [Bealer]
	Full Idea: Some say that proper names have no descriptive content, but others think that although a name does not have the right sort of descriptive content which fixes a unique referent, it has a content which fixes the sort or category to which it belongs.
	From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §7)
	A reaction: Presumably 'Mary', and 'Felix', and 'Rover', and 'Smallville' are cases in point. There is a well known journalist called 'Manchester', a famous man called 'Hilary', a village in Hertfordshire called 'Matching Tie'... Interesting, though.

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / b. Definite descriptions

9454	The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's [Bealer]
	Full Idea: The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's, ...of which to many Frege's is the most intuitive of the four. Frege says they refer to the unique item (if it exists) which satisfies the predicate.
	From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §5)
	A reaction: He doesn't expound the other three, but I record this a corrective to the view that Russell has the only game in town.

13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / a. Coherence as justification

19513	A contextualist coherentist will say that how strongly a justification must cohere depends on context [DeRose]
	Full Idea: If you are a coherentist and a contextualist, you'll probably want to hold that how strongly beliefs must cohere with one another in order to count as knowledge (if they are true), or to count as justified, is a contextually variable matter.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.09)
	A reaction: How exciting! He's talking about ME! Context might not only dictate the strength of the coherence, but also the range of beliefs involved. In fact all of Thagard's criteria of coherence may be subject to contextual variation.

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / a. Contextualism

19514	Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose]
	Full Idea: The great rival to contextualism is classical 'invariantism' - invariantism about the truth-conditions [for knowing], combined with variable standards for warranted assertability.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.12)
	A reaction: That is, I take it, that we might want to assert that someone 'knows' something, when the truth is that they don't. That is, either you know or you don't, but we can bend the rules as to whether we say you know. I take this view to be false.

19515	We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose]
	Full Idea: We might make the basic contextualist schema more precise ...by saying the change in content will consist in a change in the range of relevant alternatives. Higher standards would discriminate from a broader range of alternatives.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.14)
	A reaction: This would handle the 'fake barn' and 'disguised zebra' examples, by saying lower standards do not expect such discriminations. The zebra case has a lower standard than the barn case (because fake barns are the norm here).

19510	In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose]
	Full Idea: I'm inclined to accept that in certain contexts the standards for knowledge are so low that little more than true belief is required.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.6)
	A reaction: DeRose emphasises that 'a little more' is needed, rather than none. The example given is where 'he knew that p' means little more than 'the information that p was available to him' (in a political scandal).

19516	Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose]
	Full Idea: While skepticism has drawn much of the attention of contextualists, support for contextualism should also - and perhaps primarily - be looked for in how 'knows' is utilised in non-philosophical conversation.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1016)
	A reaction: Contextualists say scepticism is just raising the standards absurdly high. I take it that the ordinary use of the word 'know' is obviously highly contextual, and so varied that I don't see how philosophers could 'regiment' it into invariant form.

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / b. Invariantism

19511	If contextualism is about knowledge attribution, rather than knowledge, then it is philosophy of language [DeRose]
	Full Idea: Maybe contextualism isn't a theory about knowledge at all, but about knowledge attributions. As such, it is not a piece of epistemology at all, but of philosophy of language.
	From: Keith DeRose (The Case for Contextualism [2009], 1.7)
	A reaction: DeRose takes this view to be wrong. At the very least this will have to include self-attributions, by the supposed knower, because I might say 'I know that p', meaning 'but only in this rather low-standard context'.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / d. Purpose of consciousness

4741	A very powerful computer might have its operations restricted by the addition of consciousness [Clark,T]
	Full Idea: It seems possible that if a powerful multi-tasking computer was then given consciousness, this might restrict its operations instead of enhancing them.
	From: Tom Clark (talk [2003]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas)
	A reaction: A nice thought, because it challenges the usual view - that consciousness brings huge intellectual liberty to a mind, and that a mind without it is necessarily restricted. Maybe consciousness is a bottleneck.

19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions

9453	Sentences saying the same with the same rigid designators may still express different propositions [Bealer]
	Full Idea: The propositions behind 'Cicero is emulated more than Tully' seems to differ somehow from 'Tully is emulated more than Cicero', despite the proper names being rigid designators.
	From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1)
	A reaction: Interesting, because this isn't a directly propositional attitude situation like 'believes', though it depends on such things. Bealer says this is a key modern difficulty with propositions.

9452	Propositions might be reduced to functions (worlds to truth values), or ordered sets of properties and relations [Bealer]
	Full Idea: The reductionist view of propositions sees them as either extensional functions from possible worlds to truth values, or as ordered sets of properties, relations, and perhaps particulars.
	From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1)
	A reaction: The usual problem of all functional accounts is 'what is it about x that enables it to have that function?' And if they are sets, where does the ordering come in? A proposition isn't just a list of items in some particular order. Both wrong.

19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / a. Propositions as sense

9451	Modal logic and brain science have reaffirmed traditional belief in propositions [Bealer]
	Full Idea: Philosophers have been skeptical about abstract objects, and so have been skeptical about propositions,..but with the rise of modal logic and metaphysics, and cognitive science's realism about intentional states, traditional propositions are now dominant.
	From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1)
	A reaction: I personally strongly favour belief in propositions as brain states, which don't need a bizarre ontological status, but are essential to explain language, reasoning and communication.